Oscar-winning actor and global beauty ambassador for L’Oreal Lupita Nyong’o returned to Kenya this week as the first Kenyan ever to win an Oscar. The African beauty just wrapped up filming her latest movie ‘Queen of Katwe’ in South Africa and will debut in ‘Star Wars’ later this year. Lupita engages here in a delightful, reflective interview with Kenyan journalist Larry Madowo.

AOC loved Lupita before she won an Oscar. But to open an email from the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, where we support orphan elephants, and read that the stellar woman Lupita was there — as evidenced in this magnificent photo — brought tears to our eyes.

In addition to joining WildAid on behalf of elephants, Lupita will be promoting women’s causes, acting and the arts in her native Kenya. She also visited Amboseli National Park and filmed public service messages for international distribution in Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United States.

She also met with Kenya-based African Wildlife Foundation and Save the Elephants who partner on these projects, as well as representatives of Wildlife Direct, and Ol Pejeta and Lewa Conservancies — all groups active in combating poaching in Kenya.

Lupita Nyong’o: WildAid Global Ambassador for Elephants

]]>TUSIMAME Song Says 'Stand Up' For African Elephants As New York Crushes A Ton of Ivoryhttp://www.anneofcarversville.com/glamtribale/2015/6/21/tusimame-song-says-stand-up-for-african-elephants-as-new-yor.htmlAnne2015-06-21T15:12:21Z2015-06-21T15:12:21Z

TUSIMAME | Save the Elephants

‘TUSIMAME’ is a powerhouse song about saving Africa’s elephants. It brings together talented artists including South Sudan’s Emmanuel Jal, Tanzania’s Vanessa Mdee, Congo’s Syssi Managa and Juliani Kenya. TUSIMAME first debuted in March 2015 at the resident of US Ambassador to Kenya Robert F. Godec. The pan-African musical stand against the destruction of Africa’s heritage and its elephants is part of We Want Peace’s (WWP) #StandForElephants campaign.

‘In 1970, there were approximately 1.5 million elephants residing in Africa. Today there are fewer than 500,000. An average of 90 elephants are slaughtered every day and if this continues, there will be no African elephants left in the next 200 years’ said Emmanuel Jal. ‘Music is one of the world’s most powerful tools when it comes to provoking emotion and inspiring real change. We need to take responsibility of our eco-system, and our nature, and elephants are a beautiful and crucial part of that nature’.

The situation is particularly alarming in Tanzania, according to wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC. It’s estimated that the elephant population has declined from 109,051 in 2009 to 43,330 in 2014.

USIMAME’ — meaning stand up — was filmed in partnership with WildAid in Kenya at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust near Nairobi. AOC has fostered an elephant at the trust and you can, too.

Ivory sales are illegal internationally since 1989 and in most developed countries around the world. China is the largest market for illegal ivory, but sadly the United States is the second largest market.

New York Crushes A Ton of Ivory

On Friday June 19, illegal elephant ivory was put on display and then destroyed in the center of Times Square in New York City. Elephant poaching is soaring according to conservation groups, as a pound of ivory can fetch $1,500 on the black market. Hari Sreenivasan reports for PBS. A crowd of about 1500 gathered to bear witness as the crushing machine, which resembled a trash-collecting truck, destroyed a ton of ivory.

Victor Gordon Sentenced

Much of the ivory in the form of carved statues and trinkets came from a 2009 raid on a Philadelphia art store owned by Victor Gordon. As part of his guilty plea agreement, Gordon paid $150,000 and was sentenced to 30 months in prison by a federal judge earlier this month. Eight West Africans have also been prosecuted in what officials call Operation Scratchoff.

Carbon Dating & the 1989 Ban

Because ivory dating before 1989 is technically legal in much of the world, proving the pedigree of elephant tusks has been a challenge for law enforcement. However, in 2013 Utah researchers developed a new application of a technique known as ‘bomb-curve 1c dating’ that allows officials to ascertain the carbon in both collagen and the mineral apatite within ivory to provide an age of death of the animal from which the ivory originated, writesThe Guardian.

The study’s lead author, Kevin Uno, a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said: “We’ve developed a tool that allows us to determine the age of a tusk or piece of ivory, and this tells us whether it was acquired legally. Our dating method is affordable for government and law enforcement agencies and can help tackle the poaching and illegal trade crises.”

]]>Toni Garrn In Seoul Lensed by Giampaolo Sgura For Vogue Germany July 2015http://www.anneofcarversville.com/glamtribale/2015/6/14/toni-garrn-in-seoul-lensed-by-giampaolo-sgura-for-vogue-germ.htmlAnne2015-06-14T18:27:13Z2015-06-14T18:27:13Z

]]>Frida Kahlo's Nature Obsession Thrives At New York Botanical Gardenhttp://www.anneofcarversville.com/glamtribale/2015/6/2/frida-kahlos-nature-obsession-thrives-at-new-york-botanical.htmlAnne2015-06-02T18:06:34Z2015-06-02T18:06:34ZA blockbuster exhibit honoring Frida Kahlo has opened at the New York Botanical Gardens, her first solo appearance in New York in a decade. FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life has a unique focus on Kahlo’s relationship with nature in her native country of Mexico. From her garden and home decor and the complex use of nature in the artist’s art, this New York Botanical Exhibit is the first to focus exclusively on Kahlo’s intense interest in the botanical world and will close on Nov. 1, 2015.

Guest curated by distinguished art historian and specialist in Mexican art, Adriana Zavala, Ph.D., the exhibition will transform many of The New York Botanical Garden’s spaces and gardens. It will reimagine Kahlo’s studio and garden at the Casa Azul (Blue House) in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, and include a rare display of more than a dozen original paintings and drawings on view in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library’s Art Gallery.

Accompanying programs invite visitors to learn about Kahlo’s Mexico in new ways through poetry, lectures, Mexican-inspired shopping and dining experiences, and hands-on activities for kids. Bilingual texts in English and Spanish will provide historical and cultural background, with photos of the garden as it appeared during Kahlo’s lifetime, along with quotes from the artist about her home and connection to the botanical world.

The New York Timesquotes curatorAdriana Zavala. an associate professor of modern and contemporary Latin American art history and director of Latino studies at Tufts University, who agreed that the exhibition concept was a bit unusual.

The unusual focus of the show turned out to be the strongest selling point for Ms. Zavala. She is impatient with the standard approaches to Kahlo, which tend to see the art, especially the self-portraits, as emblems in a now almost mythic life story. “I am not interested in the biographical march through the paintings,” she said. “My effort has always been to contextualize her.”

The flowers, fruits and vegetables prominent in Kahlo’s self-portraits, and even more so in her still lifes, gave Ms. Zavala the opportunity to examine key concepts in her art like duality, hybridity and cross-pollination, both natural and cultural. Kahlo took a mystical view of the relationship between humans and the cosmos, and she absorbed powerful oppositions — sun and moon, life and death, male and female — into the complex swirl of symbolic forms in her art.

]]>Song Kyung-ah In 'Wild Western Warrior' By Yoon Myung Sub For Vogue Korea May 2015http://www.anneofcarversville.com/glamtribale/2015/5/11/song-kyung-ah-in-wild-western-warrior-by-yoon-myung-sub-for.htmlAnne2015-05-11T15:52:27Z2015-05-11T15:52:27ZModel Song Kyung-ah struts her fashion style in the desert in ‘Wild Western Warrior’ styled by Yoon Myung Sub who also captures Song in images for Vogue Korea May 2015./ Hair by Anmiyeon; ,akeup by Bakhyeryeong